When billionaire
Bill Gates
announced he would be running
Microsoft
on a part-time basis until it recruited a new chief executive last year, the business world was titillated.

Part-time leaders are a very rare breed around the world and, of the few that manage it, most are women.

Of course Gates was not really working part time: his days were fully ­committed to his charitable foundation and, as chairman, helping out at Microsoft until the appointment of
Satya Nadella
in February.

However, it was a nice idea while it lasted.

The global business community is accustomed to the notion that businesses must be led by one person, who is available 24-hours, seven days a week. When you reach the top of the tree, you belong to the company.

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This idea persists despite the fact that company boards are often populated by part-time non-executive directors and chairs. While these board members come and go and divide their attention between their company responsibilities and their other interests, employees who want to work less than five days a week struggle to be taken seriously.

In an attempt to change perception in the UK, online job site Timewise Jobs compiles an annual Part-Time Power List, celebrating high-profile executives who are “out and proud" about their part-time status.

Timewise makes an effort to search out male leaders who work less than a full week – proving that part-time is not only for women.
ESCAPING THE RAT RACE

It is slow going. On last year’s list, just seven of the 50 part-time executives were men. There was a finance director of a £40 million ($72 million) ready-made meals company, the executive chairman of a marketing firm and a technical director at IBM.

On a much smaller scale, the CEO of handcrafted goods site Folksy.com,
James Boardwell
, works 2 ½ days per week. All but one of his six staff work part time and they all have a great deal of autonomy about how they go about their work – the only requirement that they be available for a catch-up on Mondays.

The founder of cause marketing company Blue Dot World, Chris Ward, works 3 ½ days per week and has written a book on escaping the “rat race". He was previously creative director at Comic Relief and a director of FIFA World Cup Legacy. He uses his private time to achieve goals such as cycling the entire Tour de France route, running international marathons and spending playtime with his kids.

The chief economist of the Lloyds Banking Group, Patrick Foley (three days) leads a team responsible for advising the board, executive committee and senior management. He spends his free time undertaking Ironman ­triathlon races.

In Australia, around 45 per cent of employed women work part time, ­compared with 16 per cent of men. Only one-quarter of these workers were looking for more hours of work.
IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY

Ursula Hogben
understands the desire to make work fit around family. She thought it a sensible idea to leave her job as a director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch to set up her own law firm when she became a mother of twins.

“I thought it would be more flexible. It was, but it wasn’t less work," she says, laughing.

Eighteen months later, she co-founded LegalVision Australia, an online legal services provider and law firm with 23 employees which services small to medium-sized businesses.

Hogben, who is the company chief operating officer, says the firm is full of people who have left big commercial firms because they want to get a life. Hogben and her co-founders, CEO Lachlan McKnight (formerly an assistant vice president with Barclays ­Capital) and CTO Evan Tait-Styles work flexible hours around the demands of work and family but, as LegalVision is a start-up, none of them of them are actually working part time.

“We are all parents of young children, so there may be early starts and early finishes. I work from home once a week and I don’t think I would have got that in a comparable corporate role," Hogben says.

So does she think that the firm could be led by a part-time CEO? “Anything is possible – so long as everyone around the CEO wants to make it work as well."

However, the most senior lawyer in the firm (after Hogben) has just joined because he wants to work three to four days a week, spending extra time with his children and on his own business.

“I think that is why he left the big city company," says Hogben.
DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Workplace author and former Financial Times editor Alison Maitland says it is unnecessary to make a “binary division" between part-time and full-time work.

“Part time is seen as low commitment; it is seen as a women’s thing, a mothers’ thing, for people who are not on the fast track," she says.

“Part time could be two hours a week or 30 hours a week. Very often, people who work part time put in more time than they are contracted to do because they are motivated," she says, adding that working the same hours as a full-timer is not the point.

“[However], the terminology should be irrelevant; it should be about what people produce, whether they fulfil requirements. It is not about the hours. That encourages presenteeism and being there for the sake of being seen, whether or not you are doing ­productive work or whether you can be doing work more productively somewhere else."

Maitland co-wrote Future Work and Why Women Mean Business and was recently in Australia to lead some forums for the Women on Boards organisation.

Maitland says the real breakthrough on part-time work will be when jobs are no longer advertised by the hours of work, or even by location.

“People who work very efficiently and get work done in a short time should be rewarded because they are productive.

“But what happens is that, if they leave early, they are seen as slackers or given more work to do to fill up their time. It is a crazy situation."